Major Arcana
by incandescens
Summary: Oriya's musings after the Kyoto arc, in Tarot terminology.


Major Arcana   
  
"The doctor will not be coming here again," I said. I had seen it in your eyes, just as I had on the night that we killed your mother. You'd chosen to finally throw down the Tower and open up Death's mystery. 

We do these things out of order. You'd played the Devil too long, and sought answers from a Hanged Man, a purple-eyed stranger with something broken inside. 

So here I sit, unwilling to leave the Moon for the Sun, unwilling to seek the Star's clarity. I am a creature of delusion and madness. I mix the sword's edge with the body's suppleness, the way of flowers and tea with the way of steel and duels. I wait in the darkness where the dogs and wolves howl together at the moon, and where creatures of water crawl forth and walk upright, clothing their nakedness in silk and shadow. 

I am a fool. But we all start that way. 

You showed me how to play this game, how to turn the wheel and watch the cycle trace itself through infinity until we have the world and throw it away. I think that we were both deluding ourselves, though. We knew we'd stopped the Wheel, and we both knew that we sat and turned each card in denial of the fact that anything else could happen, anything else would happen. Our aims were pointless or impossible. How better to pretend to ourselves that we still progressed? 

You were the Magician; you held the four tools, and reached one hand up to Heaven, and extended the other down to Hell. I could only marvel at you, and dress myself in scarlet to be your altar. 

I was the High Priestess, however, and how that angered you! You never could keep silent and hold to understanding, could you? Between the pillars of the mystery, I folded back my man's skin and put on woman's garb, and held the secret of the law with every whisper in my ear that I would not reveal to you. And so we turn the card, and so the wheel turns on. 

Ukyo . . . she was the temporal world that you reached out to touch, you grew your roses for her. And yet you never quite reached her, did you? She was the uncrowned Empress. And you were the Emperor who did not seek to rule. 

You sought other things. 

You should have been more wary of the Hierophant. He is jealous of his own, and just as you may smile in the moonlight, he watched you from the shadows and moved to take back his own property. I saw you come in bleeding, that night. I sponged away the blood and kissed the wounds. 

And the Lovers -- oh, we're all the lovers, all of us, always turning our faces up to see the sun rather than looking at the other person opposite from us. You and me. You and him. Him and the boy. You and the boy. The Hierophant. The Chariot. All of us moving through the dance and not seeing, never seeing. 

Perhaps you should have stayed the Hermit a little longer. I thought that you found some fulfilment in that path. But maybe I am wrong. I often am. Delusion is my stock-in-trade. 

I've lost my order now, stepped outside the pattern, but who cares? Let's follow the Chariot on his way, as with his sun-bright hair he forces action and bridles the horses to his path. I barely saw him, only for a moment, but I could feel the strength of his passage. And there's another one, Strength; you told me about her, the woman who bridles the lion and holds his jaws apart, you'd researched all of them, all, and you wanted them so much, and I was so little in your sight. 

Turn around, you Wheel of Fortune, turn around and rise for me. Your interest in others has always been fleeting. You took Temperance between your hands and scarred him and used him and toyed with him until he screamed. And then you let him go. And now he can't live without you, because you're part of how he defines himself. Charming Devil. Beautiful Death. 

I tried to tell you that it was unhealthy to keep your personal Death in your laboratory, but would you listen? Well, you've passed it now, and I am still too much afraid to follow you. 

One thing that everyone agrees on is that the Hanged Man has to choose his own fate. That's what all the shinigami do, as they embrace their death, and that's what you refused. You thought that sacrificing others would be enough to show the way. No. You need to hang yourself upon that tree, my love, or else you come upon the Tower unprepared. And now it's fallen, all fallen in fire, and you with it. 

And now, what Star is there for you to see? I am jealous, and yet I will not follow you, because you went ahead and left me behind. Was it so little to you, all those moonlit nights, all the memories of our youth, all the red leaves and autumn wind? Was the past your spur, or were you driven by something else? 

What did you see in your Star, your Hanged Man, your precious Lover? What was he to you that I couldn't give? My lies were sweeter than any of his truths. My truths were keener than any of his stammering evasions. 

I would not have killed you. 

I would dream of the Sun for you, after Judgement, but what will you say at the trial? Little child, little camellia, plead for him, because you loved him, just as I do, and it never mattered to either of us that he would never be ours. You know what it means to turn your face towards the sun and dream. You know that the heart can be torn from the breast, and the soul and body yet live. He told me about you. He remembered you. Isn't that enough? Remember him in turn. Remember how he would smile. Think of a child under the Sun, playing with the dolls who would not hurt him, and speak a word for him. 

But if there is one thing which I am sure of, then it is this; if he achieves the World, he will cast it away. He was never a man to be content, he could not be at peace, because he understood that there is no peace for any soul in any circle of the world. Surely I will see him again. Surely he will walk over the cliff's edge and back into my life, still cool, still elegant, still pale in white, still with one eye cast away for wisdom. 

And I? I linger here under the moon, next to my silent pool, listening to the wind in the leaves, in my silken robes and with my long hair. I dream of you, I dream of you, silver doctor, silver knife that has no fear of blood. Come to me in your dreams, and let me give you anything that you will take. Meet me in the moonlight, and let us open the doors of vision and madness together once again. 

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